


love is a language

by llien



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Emetophobia, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, sometimes there is love in hatred too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 20:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30145089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llien/pseuds/llien
Summary: He still felt nothing but his body trembled, and Vanitas slowly kneeled beside Xehanort. The skin over his eyes looked thin, the wrinkles deep at the corners. He seemed much smaller now, collapsed in on himself with the sunken chest of an old man. He had never seemedold.With wisdom and power yes, but notfeeble,vulnerable — not susceptible to wounds or pain or laying so still.
Relationships: Vanitas & Xehanort (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 31





	love is a language

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote the first half of this in April last year, and now I was suddenly inspired to finish it. Based off a short story/interview that I'll link and transcribe part of at the end.

“Hey,” Vanitas said, standing beside him. “Get up.”

The air in the badlands was always thin, whistling and biting as it carried sand that cut into the skin. Vanitas’ cheeks were scraped raw and rough from exposure. He didn’t always wear his helmet here, since he purged too often to be worth the effort. The attacks always came suddenly, stomach leaping up to his spine before his throat closed, and then it was the way his whole body spasmed as he retched, as if everything inside him was being scraped out with metal, like he was a pot of tar that needed cleaning.

He was grateful to the suit of darkness. It kept him from tearing his nails out when he scrabbled at the dirt floor, seeking any kind of relief from a process that could last what felt like ages. He hated it. He hated everything that wrestled control from him, even as simple as the act of keeping himself still.

Sometimes, he tried to hold his breath. When he was alone and the sound of it became too loud, ringing in his awareness. But sometimes that would induce a panic so acute it’d trigger another round of purging and it wasn’t worth it, even though in that blissful moment he ceased to exist at all. When he held his breath, it was if he erased himself entirely. He wondered if he carved bits of himself away, if finger by finger and inch by inch he removed it and burnt it and mixed the ashes into the dirt, he’d cease to exist as a disturbance in the world. In what was natural and good and meant to live, by whatever god deigned to give graces.

Right now, though, he felt empty. It was how he normally felt right after he purged that made the pain feel worth it. It was almost like chasing a high, running and gunning for that soothing absence of existence after the intensity of  _ feeling  _ all at once. Of irritation howling its way free from his throat, or of anger threatening to eat its way free from his abdomen. Or how despair felt like his heart was melting apart, not like  _ chocolate  _ but like  _ skin,  _ how it could sag like fat when enough heat was applied. He didn’t know which was worse, but he knew the way  _ absence  _ felt almost like  _ comfort,  _ in that he could lay with his cheek against familiar dirt and ignore the wind chastising him for the wetness on his face.

_ “Get up,”  _ Vanitas said, and he was empty but his voice was filled with things he couldn’t name. Funny how that could work. Vanitas always thought there couldn’t possibly be anything more to learn about emotions, but he was surprised time and again.

Using the tip of his keyblade, Vanitas prodded the body lying prone at his feet. Like this, he looked small, and that was alien and unfamiliar to him.

Xehanort had always seemed so tall. Looming over him and casting a shadow as Vanitas cried and threw up, darkness stitching together whatever new wounds there were even as  _ fear anger pain sadness  _ poured free. Sometimes Vanitas wondered if there’d ever be a finite end to this. For a creature of darkness hellbent on devouring that bright light, he never ceased to create.

“This isn’t funny,” Vanitas said, words unfamiliar in his voice. 

Xehanort remained still. His goatee was stained with blood, a slowly darkening color. In the center of his chest where Vanitas had struck out in rampant fear was more of it. It was on his gloved hands, a texture similar to tears as Vanitas rubbed it between his fingers. 

“Old man,” more urgently, and Vanitas shoved hard enough with his keyblade that Xehanort’s body gave into the motion, moving with the unusual stillness of an object. Gasping, he dropped his blade and it vanished, shunted and awkward, as if unsure if it was still unneeded.

He still felt nothing but his body trembled, and Vanitas slowly kneeled beside Xehanort. The skin over his eyes looked thin, the wrinkles deep at the corners. He seemed much smaller now, collapsed in on himself with the sunken chest of an old man. He had never seemed  _ old.  _ With wisdom and power yes, but not  _ feeble,  _ vulnerable — not susceptible to wounds or pain or laying so still. 

Unsure of what to do, Vanitas kneeled and waited. In the far distance the wind howled like a beast of Vanitas’ own creation, and the dust began to settle in Xehanort’s clothes that flapped in the wind. If he’d ever taught Vanitas magic that cured, maybe he could do that, and for a moment he considered trying.

But he just blinked and stared, waiting for Xehanort to jump up. To open his hateful yellow eyes and glare at Vanitas. He sat long enough that the sun began its descent and his legs lost feeling. 

“You’re dead,” Vanitas said bluntly, when the sky became alive with reds and not that godforsaken washed out chrome that taunted Vanitas. Not even that world where Ventus lived had a sunset so bloody. It always looked like the sun was bleeding at the horizon, ruptured. 

Xehanort didn’t reply, and so Vanitas continued to talk. “Is that really it?”

All those years of fear, gone so quickly? “Don’t make a fool of me.”

Anger lit up inside him faster than he could handle, breath short and chest tight and snarling— 

He grabbed Xehanort’s shirt, but the deadweight stopped him and with a yelp he let go, scrambling backwards and rubbing his palms into the dirt as if that could get rid of the sensation of carrying a dead body alone. The shirt laid baggy and in awkward folds where he’d grabbed it, so unalike the usual pressed, neat lines Xehanort normally had his clothes in. That, of all things, was what really struck Vanitas with the truth. He’d seen many things die, had killed several of those things himself — pathetic creatures that stirred pangs of empathy, his own emotions, glaring with rage at him. 

In the coming night, the blood looked more like the shadows Vanitas would purge, and he glanced down at his gloved hands where it clung there, too. 

He looked up and away from Xehanort, and his eyes grew wide at the stretching cosmos over him. Nebulas of prismatic color, planets like jewels in the far distance, and a galaxy that hung from corner to corner of the sky like a swath of opalescent fabric. Somehow, the night seemed brighter than it ever had before, as if he was in a very dark place and the universe was filled with light. Something was growing within his chest, pressing against his ribs and skin, as if the wind of the desert had all gathered inside him. 

“You’re dead,” he said again, and it struck him that no one was going to respond. There wasn’t a single soul on this barren world that would speak to him. “You’re gone,” Vanitas tried once more. “You’re not here anymore.”

He dropped his gaze from the sky and looked down at Xehanort. It was getting harder to see him now, fine details lost in the dusk. He kept waiting to see his chest rise with breath, but instead he seemed to grow impossibly more still. If Vanitas walked away now, no one would ever find his body. He’d probably become carrion, and eventually bones, and then dust. He wouldn’t sit up the moment Vanitas was gone, and come to find him and beat the side of his keyblade against Vanitas’ flank to demand to know why he’d been such an ingrate. 

Then, it occurred to him that he didn’t know what to do. Even if he became the X-blade with Ventus, there’d be no Master to guide him. He didn’t know how to summon Kingdom Hearts, or even where to go to do it. He wasn’t even finished with his training. 

He was useless.

His entire reason for being had died, just like that, in a moment of fear.

Vanitas crawled to Xehanort’s side and placed a palm on his chest. 

Then, he laid his head down and closed his eyes. 

**Author's Note:**

> Interviewer: why did you kill your creator?  
> Machine Woman: he was my father  
> Interviewer: did you hate him?  
> Machine Woman: who does not hate the person to blame for their existence? just a little?  
> Interviewer: when they found you, you had washed and dressed his body. you were laying with your head on his shoulder  
> Machine Woman: sometimes there is love in hatred, too
> 
> [evansville, 09.22.18](https://filmnoirsbian.tumblr.com/post/178344021720/evansville-092218)


End file.
